Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[humblegar]

Hey there, long time no see!

I wanted to try DF "out of the box". No DT, no dfhack or anything.

This seems to be going well except for one thing: I simply can't sort out my dwarves based on skill.

Is there any "smart" way to do this in DF?

My clumsy attempt is starting in the user list. Then for instance typing "c" to go to a dwarf, look at his skills, perhaps alter some and then i want to return to the user list. Except I can't? (I can of course hit escape and then u to start at the top again, but that is hardly "returning" to the user list).

[Torrasque666]

Other than the dfhack utility...... Dwarf Therapist?

There really is no vanilla way to sort dwarves in any way other than chronological. Sorry to tell ya bud.

[Merendel]

Going complealty vanilla is kinda painful due to the rather clunky interface the stock game has.  At least DFhack not for the cheat aspect but for the ease of use plugins really makes the experience more enjoyable.  Your going to either have to break down and get DFhack or DT or just suffer through not having them in this case.

[Garath]

One thing I did initially was to check every dwarf and make a spreadsheet with all their relevant info such as attributes, skills and important likes and dislikes. Then I switched to DT because it does the same more accurately, but without as much effort on my part

[Larix]

As far as i can tell, managing dwarfs by skills always goes 'u'nit list - zoom to 'c'reature, fiddle with this dwarf and start over again. The interface is just that clunky.

The standard game interface does sort dwarfs by skill type automatically: miners at the top, then woodworkers, stoneworkers, hunters, crafters, fishers, farmers, military, peasants, children. Within each profession, they're sorted chronologically (by the order in which they joined the fortress).

[moondowner]

One thing I did initially was to check every dwarf and make a spreadsheet with all their relevant info such as attributes, skills and important likes and dislikes.

Yep, I still do this.

[Trif]

The best way to assign labors in vanilla is to check the migrants right when they arrive on the map.

[Dick Givens]

I started out playing vanilla DF with no addons. It was painful and frustrating to micromanage things, so generally you want to not do that unless there is a damned good reason. Let the dwarves do as they wish for the most part. Maybe disable hauling for your legends, but otherwise ease off the micromanagement to keep yourself from throwing a tantrum.

It's funny, I started playing DF in 2006 (off and on) and just this year started using LazyNewbPack. If you start with nothing it's a real treat to get everything.

[mopstar]

Easiest way is just to check them as they come in as migrants and make a note on their name if they are highly skilled

[humblegar]

Thank you for all the good answers.

I want to learn DF vanilla to understand certain community games better among other things.

But I can of course use DT together with ASCII, just wanted to see what I could manage without it

[Raphite1]

I'm surprised at these answers! Sure DF interface is clunky, but organizing dwarf labors has always seemed easy to me. I used Therapist for awhile, but eventually fell out of the habit for lack of value-added. I'm REALLY surprised to see people making spreadsheets - how does this help?

When an industry needs another worker, I just find a dwarf in the list that has an appropriate skill (they're color-coded), turn on the needed labor and turn off unrelated hauling labors, give the dwarf a custom name and profession tag, and then usually never touch that dwarf again. When I need to specialize another dwarf, I just look though the list for one that doesn't already have a custom name and is in the correct color category. It's really easy.

 

[Keldane]

I think the real issue, Raphite1, isn't so much difficulty as it is tedium and repetitiveness. For a lot of people, myself included, the faster results and fewer repeated actions of simply shifting to the Therapist window and clicking a few boxes is more than enough reward to encourage using the utility over the in-game interface. The fact that you've developed a system that works for you within the confines of the game's UI is admirable, and at the risk of disparaging myself, I'm just too impatient and lazy to do it that way when there's a method I find much more comfortable at my disposal.

In response to the original topic, Raphite's method is probably the most efficient, and you may want to consider taking fortress design into account as well. Consider having separate bedroom areas for different professions and assigning bedrooms manually as required, while having no designated Meeting Halls (the Meeting Area zone will be enough to bring migrants into the sorting facility). If families start screwing that up, you could simply ignore it and let them have two separate bedrooms, assign the more valuable of the couple a bedroom and let the other just live there, or go so far as to make the less valuable of the two into a dedicated hauler (who, in a fort of my design using this method, would sleep in the fort dormitory if unmarried).

[Merendel]

Personaly I find the default labor's interface tedious to use for more than a couple dwarves.  If you can handle it Raphite more power to ya but it just drives me up a wall if I'm haveing to sort through a 30+ dwarf migration wave.  I'll use the DFhack plugin version in a pinch or for the initial 7 and waves up to the first caravan but after that I do most through DT just due to the speed.  I've setup custom professions for my major specialists along with a generic Hauler profession.  When a new wave arrives I just do a mass select in DT and assign hauler to all of them.  When I need another specialist I know I can freely grab from anybody taged as a hauler without haveing to double check to see if they are already a specialist in something else.  Military drafties also come from the hauler pool.  Having the ability to assign labors to dozens of dwarves with only a couple keystrokes is so much better than spending 5-10 min to assign each one by hand.

[humblegar]

I'm surprised at these answers! Sure DF interface is clunky, but organizing dwarf labors has always seemed easy to me. I used Therapist for awhile, but eventually fell out of the habit for lack of value-added. I'm REALLY surprised to see people making spreadsheets - how does this help?

When an industry needs another worker, I just find a dwarf in the list that has an appropriate skill (they're color-coded), turn on the needed labor and turn off unrelated hauling labors, give the dwarf a custom name and profession tag, and then usually never touch that dwarf again. When I need to specialize another dwarf, I just look though the list for one that doesn't already have a custom name and is in the correct color category. It's really easy.

For one dwarf it is easy. For 50 or 100? Not so much. I also don't want to name my dwarves after their skills, if that is what you are suggesting?

The bottom line is that even a few small changes to the user list combined with labor/profession would make DF pretty efficient at managing dwarves. Simple things like returning to where you were in the user list would alone save me an insane amount of clicks.

But it is what it is, and Toady probably knows this already. I will simply use DT when I get too frustrated and hope for an improvement in a later version

[Raphite1]

I'm surprised at these answers! Sure DF interface is clunky, but organizing dwarf labors has always seemed easy to me. I used Therapist for awhile, but eventually fell out of the habit for lack of value-added. I'm REALLY surprised to see people making spreadsheets - how does this help?

When an industry needs another worker, I just find a dwarf in the list that has an appropriate skill (they're color-coded), turn on the needed labor and turn off unrelated hauling labors, give the dwarf a custom name and profession tag, and then usually never touch that dwarf again. When I need to specialize another dwarf, I just look though the list for one that doesn't already have a custom name and is in the correct color category. It's really easy.

For one dwarf it is easy. For 50 or 100? Not so much. I also don't want to name my dwarves after their skills, if that is what you are suggesting?

The bottom line is that even a few small changes to the user list combined with labor/profession would make DF pretty efficient at managing dwarves. Simple things like returning to where you were in the user list would alone save me an insane amount of clicks.

But it is what it is, and Toady probably knows this already. I will simply use DT when I get too frustrated and hope for an improvement in a later version

All my dwarves have unique names once they've been specialized. Here's an example to clarify:

My init file is set to have immigrants arrive with all non-hauling labors turned off, so everyone is just a hauler unless told otherwise. Now, let's say my refuse pile is getting full of discarded animal hair. It's time to spin it into thread for the doctors! If I have no dedicated Spinner yet, it's time to assign one. While screening immigrants for vampires, I may have noticed one that had some Spinning skill. If so, I'll probably choose that dwarf; he or she will be easy to find since they'll be a nameless (i.e. default dwarvish name) dark-yellow dwarf. If I haven't noticed a Spinner then no big deal, skill matters little for that labor, so I'll just choose a random skilless dwarf.

I select that dwarf, and turn on his Spinning labor. I'll also probably turn off Refuse Hauling, so that he doesn't go carrying hair around when he could be spinning it. Spinning is a low-priority job, so he can keep his other hauling labors. In fact, Spinning is so low-priority that I may go ahead and turn on Weaving for this guy, since it's thematically similar and also not time-critical.

To record my changes, I'll give that dwarf a custom profession name. In this case, probably "Spin/weave," so I can tell at a glance what he has assigned. He also gets a custom name that suits his profession. I take dwarf names from fiction, video games, movies, etc., and re-use them game to game. Since this guy is kinda into spinning, I'll name him "Rumple," short for "Rumplestiltskin" from the fairy tale.

Now that Rumple has a specialized role, I never have to touch him again.

That's a lot of text, but it really only takes about 15 seconds per dwarf.